where am i, ..

At the end of last year, when I went back to Japan,
I sold off the mountain of books my mother had owned.
And from between those books, a single sheet of paper fluttered out.

It was a children’s poem written by Michio Mado,
hand-copied by my mother.
I brought it back with me to the Netherlands,
framed it, and now it hangs on my wall.

---

The bear

Spring is here
Bear opened his eyes—
was thinking, kind of slow.
The flowers are dandelions, I know...
But hmm, who am I?
Who am I?

Spring is here
Bear was awake
was walking slowly to the stream.
He saw a face so grand in the water’s gleam:
“Oh! I’m Bear—that’s who I am.”
That feels grand.

Michio Mado

---

The other day, I sent a message to my mother’s mobile phone:
“Hi Mom, how are you?”

Not that I really expected a reply.

Lately, she seems to have forgotten how to answer calls—she hardly ever picks up anymore.

So I figured she wouldn’t be reading text messages either.

It was just a test.

Messages I’d been sending to others had all bounced back with error notifications,

so I needed a recipient I could message again and again.

That recipient became my mother’s silent phone.

To my surprise, she wrote back.

“Same as always.”

I was so happy.
I replied,
“Well,  you’re taking it easy. I envy you.”
“I’ve been super busy with work. Every day is a lot.”

Then my mother said:

“Where am i, ...”

I realized—this will probably start happening more often now.
That she’ll be lost, not knowing where she is,
and I’ll be far away, unable to reach out and take her hand.

I told her the name of the facility, and said,
“It’s a nursing care home.” I answered correctly and precisely.
But now I think—
I should have said,
“You’re in a dark forest.”

If it had been the mother I once knew,
she would have immediately recognized it as a quote from Dante’s Divine Comedy.
She always loved that kind of shallow yet intellectual black humor.
She would have brightened up in an instant and laughed out loud:
“How awful of you!”

I truly regret saying “nursing care home.”
There are expressions in this world that are far more despairing in tone than “a dark forest.”

In a sense, she is a bear in hibernation.
Still a bear.
She may be dazed, forgetting who she is,
but her true nature—that she is a bear—has not changed one bit.
If only she could see her face in the water,
she would surely remember herself.

I want to be that river for her.
To me, my mother will always be the bear with the grand face.
What matters is that I don’t forget it.
It’s not quite a belief,
but something close to it—
and I cling to it with a heart that feels like it might cry.